Passing Tests Prove Nothing: Why Green Suites Can Still Hide Bugs

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Computer scientist Edsger Dijkstra warned in 1970 that testing can reveal the presence of bugs but never guarantee their absence, a principle many engineers acknowledge yet routinely ignore. A green test suite only confirms that no failure was caught under the specific conditions tested, not that the code is correct. The problem has grown more acute with AI-generated code, where models can produce both functions and matching tests that pass together while missing the same edge cases. Engineers are urged to write tests designed to break code rather than confirm it, focusing on boundary conditions, invariants, and inputs the original author never considered. When AI delivers code with passing tests, that should mark the beginning of review, not the end.

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